Scholars have been active in investigating causes and consequences of austerity policies. We examine how economists use the term "austerity" in scientific studies and measure austerity in empirical analyses. The sample includes around 3,500 journal articles published in the top 400 journals...

We present a novel approach for measuring democracy based on Support Vector Machines, a mathematical algorithm for pattern recognition. The Support Vector Machines Democracy Index (SVMDI) is continuously on the 0-1-interval and enables a very detailed measurement of democracy for 188 countries...

We use the US presidential election on 3 November 2020 to examine how the US president influences economic expectations of international experts. We design a large-scale RCT among 843 experts working in 107 countries, asking about their expectations regarding GDP growth, unemployment, inflation,...

The nexus between corruption and economic growth has been examined for a long time. Many empirical studies measured corruption by the reversed Transparency International’s Perception of Corruption Index (CPI) and ignored that the CPI was not comparable over time. The CPI is comparable over...

We examine how fiscal rules influence economic growth. The results show that constitutional fiscal rules promoted growth from the Industrial Revolution until World War II (1789-1950) and also increased modern economic growth (1985-2015). To address selection on unobservables, we conduct a...

We examine the sustainability of public finances and its determinants for 19 Eurozone countries from 1995 to 2020. We conclude for the existence of panel cointegration between government revenues and expenditures; primary government balance and one-period lagged public debt-to-GDP ratio; and...

We develop a two sector incomplete markets integrated assessment model to analyse the effectiveness of green quantitative easing (QE) in complementing fiscal policies for climate change mitigation. We model green QE through an outstanding stock of private assets held by a monetary authority and...

We assess the drivers of fiscal sustainability in 20 OECD economies between 1950 and 2019. We find stable long-term relationships between government revenues and expenditures as well as between the primary budget balance and past public debt ratio for the full panel. Performing an expanding...

We assess public finances solvency for Euro Area countries using quarterly data between 1999Q1 and 2020Q4. Through a country-by-country analysis, the answer to the title question is true. For most countries, (i) the primary budget balance reacts positively to the lagged public debt ratio and...

We assess the link between fiscal sustainability coefficients, namely the responses of the primary government balance and the global government balance to the debt-to-GDP ratio, and the response of government revenues to government expenditures. For 22 OECD developed countries we use annual data...